


Step by Step

by DinoDina



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Battle of Hogwarts, Canon-Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Depression, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:47:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24079984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinoDina/pseuds/DinoDina
Summary: Percy Weasley, the Battle of Hogwarts, and what comes after.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	Step by Step

Percy takes the first step.

It's not enough.

The seeds of doubt had long ago been sown, and now they're far taller than the seedlings they were before, pushing the roof up, up, up, wide leaves and thick stems unbreakable; they break the feeble plaster of the walls and ceiling, letting in no sunlight, because that would be too simple, but welcome in rainwater and cold air.

They beat around Percy's face as a punishment, bringing him to awareness, reminding him of home. They urge him to go back to the welcoming countryside around the Burrow, beneath the familiar clear sky and among the overgrown grass that would snake up his legs and keep him in place against his own cowardice. And at the same time, they beg him to ignore the yearning for safety and finally take the step he's thinking of.

Green and bright; so bright against the muted tones of Percy's sorry flat, and not at all welcoming despite the coloring. _Too_ bright. Too much. Then again, almost everything's too much for Percy.

He's never been one for taking risks. Just enough risks to not be formulaic, to stand out and gain success, always just out of the lines enough to be noticed, but conventional and _safe_.

There is nothing safe about this.

Percy steps onto his small balcony as though he's stepping off a cliff, half-expects to go plummeting down, because it's not the first time a Ministry employee's met their end in an odd accident, something that should not have harmed a wizard except that it _did_ —but he doesn't fall. It's not raining, no matter what his overactive imagination tells him, and the flat is very much still whole, not overgrown with his resolution to leave. It would be better if he could see it, if he had some sort of proof that he's changed—that he's changing—and that it will all work out when he sees his family. Except that's not what it's all about: not about being right, not this time, but about _doing_ right, perhaps for the first time in his life. Forgiveness would be good— _so good_ —but it's not the goal. His determination to do the right thing is terrifying, is _new_ , nothing like anything he's ever done before, but it's not enough to make actual plants grow. Just metaphorical ones.

He was always pretentious.

Still, it's normal enough to need a moment. He's taken the step, he's standing in his travel cloak, in muggle clothes that are far more suited to battle than his robes, he's clutching at his wand like a lifeline, he's looking at the sky as if it's for the last time.

It very well might be.

Percy closes his eyes against a shiver that involuntarily shakes his body and Disapparates.

The Hog's Head is as inexplicably both cold and warm as always, uncomfortable in its ambiguity because Percy likes— _needs_ —something solid holding him up, some knowledge that things are normal, or at the very least that they're understandable. Then again, that's exactly the belief that got him into this position, so maybe not.

Aberforth knows Percy the same way he knows everyone else, having spent the past several decades watching from his shadows and letting his brother stay in the spotlight. Percy knows Aberforth the same way he knows everyone else, from painstakingly researching him while rising up the ranks, lest he be caught unawares again like with Mr. Crouch.

He doesn't get a stink-eye from Aberforth, _exactly_ , as he appears at the inn, but it's close enough, and it's coupled with the same bitter recognition—not of Percy, but of something else that he can't put his finger on—that's characteristic of Aberforth's usual gaze upon him.

He's the last one.

Aberforth gruffly rushes him through and Percy wishes he would bleed into the walls of the passage, his human blood and flesh turning to rocks and stone and dust, never to be seen again, and the thought sits disconcertingly well with him, because if he's never seen again, he can never see his family again. He's so ashamed that he finds it a welcome possibility: he wouldn't see his father's disappointment or his mother's pain, and—worse than that—he wouldn't have to see the utter lack of surprise on his siblings' faces at how he turned out.

But the passage is damnably short and Percy ducks out of it into Hogwarts, into a room he has never seen but has always known existed, and his family is there. The last time he saw them, he ended up with food in his face, but now it might be a fist.

It isn't. Percy smiles, lets out a breath, and pushes down the bitterness that reminds him that this is only the first step.

* * *

There are several things that come after. After, which is much different from Before, which is still different from Before Before.

Before Before was filled with cruel snipes and bitterness and the feeling—that Percy still sometimes gets—that he's too big, too small, to fit into the niche his family's carved out for him, that the open fields were suffocating and that the small room could not possibly be filled by him alone. Before Before was the emptiness of having a family but being too far from them to reach.

Before was after Before Before, and Percy doesn't want to think about how he thrived there. How the safety and surety of the Ministry was welcoming after the odd loneliness of his childhood, how no matter what humiliation he was subjected to on a daily basis, he felt all the better for because it was more than what he'd been.

After began when Percy stood on his balcony and left his London flat for Hogsmeade.

After commences when the Hogwarts rubble is cleared out of the way and later painstakingly returned to its original places on the walls and ceilings by the wizards still standing after the battle.

It commences when Percy's mother throws her body over Fred's and refuses to stand when they come to take him away, when it takes the combined strength of Bill and Charlie to pull her off, and when Percy looks over at George and isn't sure if it's a blessing or a curse that he wasn't on the floor with her.

Percy stays with his parents. They all do.

There's a barely-spoken apology between before and after, a curtain falling between the times that allows Percy to return home to his old bedroom and to take up the chores he was used to in his childhood.

It's a relief when they don't question him about the years that passed. But it makes sense. They know what happened and so does he—perhaps more importantly, they all know that Percy's changed. Enough, at least, for it to count. So there's no need to bring up the rift between them, because they're not balancing on its edge, sending pebbles into the abyss below, but have moved past it, far enough that a step back won't send them plunging down, reaching up for a handhold that won't be there, but not so far that the fear of that happening has fully left them.

They take quick and careful steps away from that ravine. Percy's not sure what the destination is: something better, to be sure, something lighter and happier where they can _live_. Live, remember, and move on, and finally get to a place where they can look back, now at a safe distance, and grow.

It's going to be somewhere he can give in to the regret that threatens to drown him, sometimes. It's too soon for that, now, too soon to think of the years he gave away. It's too soon to sit and allow himself to think _it should have been me_ , to say; "If I could trade his life for mine…" and know that no matter the sentiment, it means nothing.

Soon, Percy knows, he will have to finally go back to his London flat to pack it up and never go back to being the person he was when he lived there and to reply to Kingsley Shacklebolt's job offer without feeling the need to launch himself out of the window for even considering taking it.

But for now, it's enough.


End file.
